At long last we met up with Chris Yi in Los Angeles, a city that inspires both awe and disdain in both the natives and the tourists. I grinned in relief when Sean and I were told to meet at Mossimo’s Mudspot, a modest hole-in-the-wall of cracked stucco and peeled paint. Parts of LA, like the southern parts of Orange County, are ballrooms of Victorian formality, where strangers dance with other strangers in a secret but acknowledged ritual of unspoken attraction.

“It’s the same with any city. If you go to Hollywood you’ll get a lot of stuck-up people who wanna be actors, so I just stay out of those places,” Chris explained. This guy is talkative, easy-going and interesting. I meant what I wrote in this Tweet—just give him five years, tops. If I was the sort of ‘azn’ who doted on my heritage, I’d be AZN PRYDE all over this guy, who as a fellow Asian-American has directed some cool material. But the fact stands that I don’t give a damn about my roots, not in that way, and even in that light his work is still mighty impressive. He’s twenty-three.

Our meet went aiight. Some awkward silence here and there; or maybe that was because we took simultaneous sips from our drinks. One thing is for sure: Back to the Future is a powerful force to be reckoned with. I was giddy with enthusiasm when Chris said it was his motivation to become a filmmaker. Me too! And when Sean brought up Rory’s First Kiss, his webseries in the making, Chris plunged into even deeper depths of insight: the best stories are first and foremost entertaining. Let me say that I am a believer in Roger Ebert, who wrote A film must be entertaining before it can be art. Damn true, that.

What spurred us to meet was our one mutual fixation: short films. Chris told us his sad, sad story: a student at UCLA, he fell out of love for cinema because his filmmaking peers were so damn snotty and selective. He shot Korean Days of Our Lives (which is so awesome) and then decided that advertising was less artsy-fartsy than cinema. It was only recently that he started up his Netflix account and realized how much he missed the movies and, I suppose, the potential to make his own.

You all know Sean’s story—that guy is busy with Rory’s First Kiss, which can be said to be a series of short films. Me? I’m furiously plotting a twenty-plus page romantic drama. It’s the ending that eludes me: should it end happily, or should someone, like, get shot or something?

An hour later, when Chris glanced at his iPhone and said “Alright guys, I gotta split,” we shook hands and parted ways. Sean and I zipped over to Samy’s, a superstore that sells everything on the planet you could ever want (as long as you’re a filmmaker). I lingered in front of the Steadicam display, fondling the buckles and pneumatic arms as if it were a girlfriend, until Sean whispered in my ear that it probably costs twenty-thousand dollars. We sauntered upstairs (the store is three levels high) to admire the lighting equipment, to which I noticed these really cool babies. Yes, they are also battery powered and dimmable! But alas, the bigger units run up to around two-thousand bucks.

I desire this Litepanel so bad that it violates the Seven Deadly Sins. A powerful, portable floodlight, without the need for AC or a huge-ass generator, is a total revelation.